Written by

Natalie Rankin

Contributing Writer

The Women Student Union hosted on Tuesday a book discussion of Cambodian author Somaly Mam’s The Road of Lost Innocence in the Strozier Library in celebration of Women’s History Month.

Entitled the “Book Club Meet and Greet,” the event that partnered with the Center for Global Engagement and Center for the Advancement of Human Rights focused on Mam’s true story of struggle against human trafficking in Cambodia.

“We really wanted to highlight human rights, which is such a prevalent issue,” said the Undergraduate Outreach and Programming Associate Elia Trucks.

A crowd of approximately 40 students gathered to listen to Mam’s experience.

She was born in the early 1970s, orphaned, and later told when an estranged man came to her village that he was her grandfather.

The man took her into his custody, forcing her to work as a slave during her adolescence.

When the man was finished with her, Mam was sold into human trafficking. It wasn’t until she got out that she was able to tell her story.

The main message to Trucks was speaking out, with an extremely critical theme in the book being silence in juxtaposition to the power of speaking out.

“[The point here] is that when you speak up and fight evils, you can make a difference,” Trucks said.

Erin Fabrizio, President of the RSO Trafficking added that the issue is more prevalent in our society than others may tend to think.

“2.5 million slaves are in the United States today,” said Fabrizio, with the center of the worldwide crisis.

According to the National Human Trafficking Resource Center the Polaris Project, the number of “at risk” of sexual exploitation citizen minors in the United States today stands at hundreds of thousands.

It was an especially important issue in Cambodia because according to Trucks, brothels were seen as a preventative measure against AIDs.

A second discussion of the The Road of Lost Innocence, a book Seattle Times called “haunting” with a “fresh, often poetic voice, will extend in a follow-up discussion hosted by a student moderator on Thursday, March 21 in Strozier.